I have always been fascinated by the
night's sky from an early age and spending time at the local planetarium
growing up and now I wait anxiously for the stellar images provided by NASA and
elsewhere from the Hubble, Cassini and other sources. Given this interest, it
is easy to see why I find small universes and celestial bodies in the forms of
pots and their surfaces which is so often the case with the pieces that I am
drawn to. A while back I was able to handle and photograph a large Shigaraki
tsubo and put the jpegs in a folder and skimmed over them for further study at
a later date as I was still in the process of digesting what I had just handled
and their they sat. I was looking through an EHD that I have and went to the
tsubo file and was struck by this detail shot which was not taken with any other
motive than to capture the surface where the ferocity and velocity of the
firing had impacted. The image immediately called to mind a planetary surface
where a stellar impact had sent the
debris, in this case, liquid ash running from the collision zone, the face
of the pot which was fired at a slight angle which has distributed the ash in
every direction. It is exactly this type of photo, detail shot that reminds me
exactly why I take so many photos of each pot that comes my way as serendipity
and not photographic skill will from time to time capture an image that speaks
volumes about a pot and conjures up all kinds of memories and associations that
words alone rarely can.
.JPG)